DepEd Goes Google

The Department of Education (DepEd) today announced that it has leapt into the cloud and moved the department on to utilize Google Apps for Education. Over 600,000 teachers, staff and administrators across the archipelago will soon be able to connect to a common electronic mail (e-mail), chat and calendar system (Gmail, Google Talk and Google Calendar), as well as cloud collaboration tools (Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Groups) to help them communicate more easily and efficiently.

“DepEd is an incredibly large and complex organization. With 200 divisions and 45,000 schools in more than 7,000 islands, we were looking for a way to streamline communications in order to draw the organization closer together” said DepEd Assistant Secretary Reynaldo Laguda. “Engaging an E-mail or web-mail service will address many of these communication and collaboration challenges. With this collaboration with Google, we will significantly reduce our IT costs” he continued.

From editing reports, to sharing teaching materials, Google Apps will allow DepEd employees, no matter how remote, to connect and collaborate in real time.

“Google is delighted to be supporting DepEd harness the power of the web to work more efficiently and collaboratively. Providing access to information and education is central to what we do, so it’s very exciting to see this happening at scale in the Philippines with this national project” said Samuel Cheung, Google Apps Supporting Program Regional Manager for South East Asia, Google.

With 29 million Filipinos already online — many using shared or mobile devices — this 21st century approach to education was a natural choice for DepEd.

Launched by DepEd Secretary Br. Armin A. Luistro FSC, the program will allow DepEd to join over 16 million teachers and students around the world who are already using Google Apps for Education.


About Google Apps

Google Apps for Education allows schools to give Google's communication and collaboration applications to their entire education community for free. All services are hosted by Google and are available to users via any internet-connected computer and many mobile devices. Google Apps includes the following services:
Gmail - provides gigabytes of email storage, highly effective spam filtering and powerful search with integrated voice and video chat
Google Calendar - allows easy coordination of work or class schedules, meetings and events online;
Google Video - online video private to a school’s domain
Google Docs - allows users to create and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, and drawings in real-time as well as upload and share any file type
Google Sites - develop and customize rich websites and embed Google Docs, Google Calendars, videos, and other media – no HTML required.
Google Groups - create mailing lists and discussion forums allowing students and teachers to easily and efficiently sharing documents, calendars, sites, and media with specific groups.